Was 2010 the Year of the Fish Taco?

Photo by Das Ubergeek

​Like we've been fundamentally late to many food trends (cupcakes, Pinkberry, churrascarias), OC has pioneered food trends that the lot of us laugh at when reporters declare them suddenly "in"--bánh mìs (and Vietnamese food, in general), luxe-loncheras, and now...fish tacos?

That's what Nation's Restaurant News is halfway claiming, in an article showing how the number of restaurants listing the dish on their menus rose by nearly 25 percent in the span of a year. That's a pretty cool development that does deserve a shout-out. But reporter Bret Thorn goes a bit off the tracks when he declared "2010 may go down as the year of the fish taco."

Great if only it were true.

I'm not sure exactly when fish tacos became "cool," but I'd peg the date as earlier last decade, when our Wahoo's began expanding outside the state and Taco del Mar continued its campaign to be the biggest fish taco stand of them all, bigger even than Rubio's. And fish tacos have been part of the Southern California culinary lingua franca since, oh, the mid-1980s.

2010, the Year of the Fish Taco? I thought this year was the Year of Luxe-Loncheras--or was that last year?